Tuesday on CNN’s “The Situation Room,” Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) reacted to President Donald Trump’s lawyer Michael Cohen pleading guilty to campaign contribution violations and fraud, and Trump’s one-time campaign chairman Paul Manafort being found guilty of felony tax fraud.
Blumenthal said, “Today is going to be historic. We’ll all remember what we were doing when we heard this news about Michael Cohen implicating the president in a very, very serious crime. If Donald Trump were anyone except the president of the United States, very probably he would be charged today with a crime. And the White House is looking increasingly like a criminal enterprise.”
He continued, “We’re in a Watergate moment, where the two parties have to come together. We need bipartisanship now more than ever to protect the special counsel and to stop, and I must underscore, stop consideration of pardons.”
On Trump potentially pardoning Manafort, Blumenthal said, “He has the power to pardon Paul Manafort, but he would be screaming to the world, I am guilty. And he would so undermine the credibility of his office that it would be a disaster for the nation. And it would very possibly be an obstruction of justice because he would be misusing that power to protect himself as a target of that investigation.”
He added, “I believe that at some point my Republican colleagues have to join in a bipartisan effort to save our democracy, which will be increasingly threatened if the president puts himself above the law. No one is above the law. We’re in a Watergate moment.”
Follow Pam Key on Twitter @pamkeyNEN
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